The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Various crop improvement programs require large and meticulous selection processes that effectively and accurately collect and analyze data in order to generate quality plant products as efficiently as possible and/or to develop superior cropping and/or crop improvement methods. For example, a microbial or plant improvement program typically requires a large and effective selection process to accurately select the types of microbes or plant germplasms that perform the best. In order to make very accurate selections, thousands of microbe formulations must be tested on thousands of plants to reduce the errors associated with environment, human mistakes, genetics of the plants and microbes studied, etc. Typically, data acquisition and sample collection for such testing is currently performed by hand by teams of people walking through a field using hand-held instruments and/or using individual manually-controlled devices. Although steps are taken to reduce error, the data collected in such a manner can be unreliable due to human error and fatigue, which reduces the ability to make accurate selection decisions.